Wilco Responds To Charlottesville Violence With New Benefit Song

Flowers surround a photo of 32-year-old Heather Heyer, who was killed when a car plowed into a crowd of people protesting against the white supremacist Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Va.

Chip Somodevilla
/ Getty Images

Originally published on August 15, 2017 8:29 am

Wilco has released a new song against ignorance and violence in the wake of last weekend's unrest in Charlottesville, VA. The track, called "All Lives, You Say?" is a short country shuffle that takes aim at the slogan "All Lives Matter," designed as a counter-protest to the Black Lives Matter movement.

"My mind, my mind is gone," sings frontman Jeff Tweedy. "It's too hard for me to know when I'm wrong / This is the last dying gasp of a deadly lung / Turning blue on a lawn in the sun."

"My dad was named after a Civil War general," wrote Tweedy on Wilco's Bandcamp page, announcing the song. "He voted for Barack Obama twice. He used to say, 'If you know better you can do better.' America — we know better. We can do better."

All proceeds from the sale of "All Lives, You Say?" will go to the Southern Poverty Law Center, which monitors hate groups.

The song is just one of many responses and statements from musicians about the Charlottesville protests. Last night on The Tonight Show, actor and rapper Riz Ahmed directly addressed what he called "really divided times" with a spoken word version of his decade-old song "Sour Times."

Dave Matthews Band, which originated in Charlottesville, wrote that it is "not the Charlottesville we know and love."

Over the weekend, Wolf Eyes released the album No Hate to help raise money for the family of Heather Heyer, the woman who was killed in Charlottesville when a car drove into a crowd of people protesting against the white nationalist rally. And singer Christopher Paul Stelling posted a video on Facebook of him performing a new song he wrote simply called "Charlottesville." "My heart is so heavy with the events in Charlottesville, VA" he wrote. "This is the only way I know to process those feelings."